The convenor thanks those NBs who have informally indicated to him their highest-priority comments and responses.

It would be better if such information was provided openly. Now the convenor openly admits that he knows more than the participants of the BRM.

Taking the variety of these into account, and the partial nature of the response, the convenor has decided it would be counter-productive to prescribe an order of discussion in the agenda.
Instead NBs will be invited to speak by the convenor in the meeting sessions, and the convenor will thus ensure NBs can enjoy fair representation over the course of the meeting by granting them mission to speak in alphabetical order, making as many passes over the delegations as time allows.

In session, Heads of Delegation shall otherwise indicate a wish to speak by raising their printed country sign. The convenor shall only recognise Heads of Delegation who may, if invited to speak, subsequently cede the floor to a member of their delegation.
NBs are requested to have as the topic of each meeting contribution only a single comment (or response).

Which means that it is technically impossible to agree on change packages (with the ECMA dispositions as the most prominent one) as a whole.

NBs are reminded that the purpose of the Ballot Resolution Meeting is to agree a text. Contributions that are not in accord with this objective shall be ruled out of order.
The only comments on DIS 29500 that shall be discussed are those which were properly submitted to ITTF in the 2 September 2007 DIS ballot; the only responses that shall be discussed are those of the document ISO/IEC JTC 1 SC 34 N 980, or those subsequently raised in the meeting.

Does it mean that the convenor limits the possible responses and changes the BRM may apply to the text? ISO/IEC JTC 1 SC 34 N 980 are the Project Editor's Proposed Dispostion of Comments. I am not sure the national committees will be happy with that competence castration of the BRM by its convenor. For instance some delegations circulated substantial contributions for the date problem that is not sufficiently addressed by the project editor and prepared proposals for their national comments. It is difficult to understand why Alex Brown bases the BRM work on the ECMA proposed dispositions rather than the national comments. Thus the BRM is hijacked by a private party, ECMA, that itself submitted the immature specification to fast-track and employed at least a member of the Australian delegation to work on the dispositions of comments.

JTC 1 rules prohibit the formal exchange of information between NBs for a project under late-stage ballot. Therefore it would be completely irregular for me as convenor to act as a distribution point for NB documents sent in confidence.

As to knowing more than the NBs … well, yes obviously that is/was helpful when trying to organise and structure a meeting that will give the NBs most bang for their buck.

NBs can discuss a single comment or response at once as this keeps things moving. We don't want country X saying "I want to deal with the 100 topics which are of concern to me" and taking all five days doing so. You are just plain wrong to claim this rules out change packages, as discussing a "response" more often than not will entail discussion of just such a "package".

In your final quote you embolden one phrase, but not the one before it, or the one after it. This gives a misleading impression of what I actually wrote. Read it again. You will then understand that your closing paragraph is total nonsense.

You can imagine that I didn't aim to offend any person involved but will be happy to hammer on the intransparency of the ISO process. To me, insisting on ISO rules is a technocratic defence that has little value for persons who want to get it right. If rules inhibit dissemination of information and thus better deliberations these rules are bad for NB and the standards. We found out that ISO rules do not permit the openness required to enable sufficient review of a digital standard. The less light the worse the result. The less review the more bugs.

"JTC 1 rules prohibit the formal exchange of information between NBs for a project under late-stage ballot."
-> Why?
-> If ISO rules do not permit sufficient review of the spec and coordination among member states bodies why continue?

a) For me
"or those subsequently raised in the meeting"
means that the ECMA dispositions for comments are the fundamental change proposals to be discussed and those "subsequently raised in the meeting" are changes to the project editors' proposals.

For those delegates it seemed to be a matter of rank and the fear is that putting the ECMA dispositions in the center of the negotiations gives ECMA undue rank (that after all is no 'real' member of the BRM).

b) The national comments can be discussed only one by one. If my NB submitted 144 comments I would have no chance to put forward my own national change proposal package that addresses all of my comments sufficiently for my NB.

I know that a delegation discussed an impressing solution for the date problem. It would be great to see it applied. After all the BRM should agree on as much as possible to get a decent text. Either you group responses or you discuss them on a single base. With the second approach we would likely get a BRM text that addresses a maximum of 15% of the bugs.

In my view adherence to the correct procedures is not just "technocratic"; it is absolutely essential for the fairness of the process, in this as in most formal human collaborations.

One of many reasons for prohibiting formal document exchange is so that countries can know for sure, and in advance, what is on the table at the meeting. It would be unfair for a country to arrive at the BRM and find some critical last-minute document has been formally entered into the process which needed to be considered. Informal exchange between NBs, and the drafting of working documents are, however, common phenomena. Indeed, there has - to my knowledge - already been a great deal of informal exchange prior to the BRM in this process.

"subsequently raised in the meeting" means "subsequently raised in the meeting". I didn't add "based on an Ecma response" so it beats me why you interpret it this way.

I have said nothing about mandating the Ecma dispositions are "in the center of the negotiations", so it beats me why you do. In practice it is likely that NB disagreement with Ecma proposals will be the engine of the meeting.

Of course a country cannot insist on discussing 144 comments at once; doing this properly would be unfair on other NBs who would then be squeezed out of the process.

A lot of NBs have proposals about "the date problem". The BRM is an excellent forum for airing them, and it's likely we will enjoy a good discussion on this subject.

It will be a hard time for you and the participants next week. I strongly hope the meeting will be productive to fix as many issues as possible and participants will contribute in a constructive way.

With or without rules: things can go wrong! The more technocratic the easier becomes it to hide abuse behind rules and procedures.

"In my view adherence to the correct procedures is not just "technocratic"; it is absolutely essential for the fairness of the process, in this as in most formal human collaborations."

Technocratic organisations as standard bodies get used to rules to structure the process and become unable to apply reforms. In the end it gets difficult to identify the objectives or original power constellations behind some rules. I am all for rules and respect for rules. But here rules also protect misconduct. A text is discussed that does not suit the process. National committees were bluntly hijacked.

What about common sense? What about personal responsibility and care?

As Bonhoeffer said: "The ultimate question for a responsible person to ask is not how he is to extricate himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation is to live."

People outside the process are free to pose evil questions. Sometimes they are right, sometimes they don't understand. This kind of public sphere is crucial for a democratic and transparent process. Technocratic institutions as ISO lack that kind of public attention. But if public attention is there they defend behind their complex rules and apply a hostile attitude. You cannot argue with a catholic dogmatist about trinity. He has more than thousand years of sophistics to defend him. A technocrat will always use his advanced knowledge of rules to fence the public off. Which is after all also the purpose of these rules. To get rid off personal responsibility and become part of a powerful machine. And if someone feeds OpenXML in the machine it needs to be processed…